So I had an intresting dream about Consent.

Dreams are an interesting look into our psyche they can tell us many things about ourselves. I had a dream last night that took a weird turn and I’d like to share it with you.

For background, I was married up until about a year and a half ago, now my wife and I are separated pending divorce. It wasn’t a bad break she’s sitting next to me right now playing Skyrim. Her boyfriend is at work but we’re good friends as well. So I’ve been single for a while.

It’s not surprising that I’m having sexually explicit dreams from time to time. Actually being a few months away from my forty-first birthday I should probably be pretty happy about it. Lol.

So in my dream and I won’t get too explicit, but to set the dream I have a girlfriend. We’ve been together for a while and were pretty comfortable talking about sex I got the impression that we had sex before. However we were staying at her parent’s house and she was a bit nervious about having sex there, even though we had our own room and bathroom.

We were getting ready to go out and decided to take separate showers. I get done with mine and she’s going in to take her’s so we are both naked. Seeing her naked body I’m overcome with desire and I approach her for a kiss. The kiss is passionate and I do caress her back. Her back, not her backside. She responds to the kiss in a way that tells me she enjoys it. If she pulled away or pushed me away or indicated in any way that she didn’t want me to kiss her I wouldn’t have.

Still, when I pull away from the kiss she looks scared and upset. I think she was worried about hurting my feelings. “You don’t want to do this?” I ask.

She gave a shy nod.

I hugged her and told her “Okay, then we won’t.” I gave her another less passionate kiss and got my clothes and left. That was the end of the dream.

Now in my dream, I felt like she was physically aroused by my approach and that if I wanted to, I could have stimulated her till her sexual desire overpowered her reservations. That she wanted to have sex, it was just not the right time or place for her, but I didn’t want her to feel bad about it later. Even if she enjoyed it, she might have felt guilty about it and that could have made it a bad experience.

I’m not trying to brag about how much I respect women, (LOL) but I wanted to share my personal philosophy when it comes to consent. I never attempt to initiate sex by grabbing and grouping. I start with tamer less threating things first kissing, caressing, cuddling. Things that are easier to say no to. If she’s not into that she’s not wanting to have sex. If she is okay with that stuff it still does not mean she wants sex if we’ve been together a while and she trusts me and knows I’ll stop when she say’s stop I might go for it. If she doesn’t know me, I ask. “Are you comfortable with this?” or “Do you want me to keep going?” Or “does this bother you?”

If I’m not sure she wants me to I sometimes ask if she wants me to kiss her or even touch her. Better safe than sorry, I never want to feel like I forced a woman to have sex or even kiss me.

I also don’t want to be on the receiving end of a forced kiss or forced sex. Not being able to choose what happens to my body sound horrible to me. If I don’t want people doing it to me, why would I do it to other people?

Let’s get back to why I’m telling you all this. The dream! It was incredible! I’ve never heard of a dream like that. What straight guy dreams about a naked woman who doesn’t want to have sex with them?

It’s certainly nice to know that I will uphold my principles even in a dream, but what does this say about me? It’s fascinating. I’d be happy to read your interpretations.

My working theory is this. This dream is all about the conflict I have from my desire for physical intimacy and my fear that it will lead to emotional attachment. Now I would like to get emotionally attached, but one of the things that happened in my marriage is that my obsession with my writing drew my attention away from my wife. It hurt her that I could not give her as much attention as she needed, and my increasing need to write kept making me more distant. I really don’t want to hurt anyone like that again.

I’m also scared of getting close to someone because of how much she needed me. I was at a point where I felt like I was always paying attention to her, never getting time for myself, and just when I thought I couldn’t stand it anymore she would say. “We never get any time together.” I loved here but I was tapped out, and she was saying it wasn’t enough. I couldn’t live like that again.

There was also a sexual issue as well. I’m 40, I’m still having sex dreams, (weird sex dreams but still) I can have sex 2-3 times per week. I’m not unhappy with my sex drive. My wife wanted sex every day, sometimes more than once. I could not keep up. For a very long time, I could make myself ready for her even if I wasn’t into it, but I got so worn out, I just couldn’t unless I got a day or two-day breaks in between. I love sex, but I don’t want my life to revolve around it, and sometimes it kind of felt like it did.

These were some of the issues that ended my marriage. It wasn’t awful. Sometimes I even miss it, but I can’t go back there. The worst was seeing my wife struggle with depression and feeling like I was the reason for her sadness.

She is so much better with the new guy. It is such a relief to see her happy.

So in short, I’m not ready. I don’t know if I’ll ever be. I’m too closed off to make someone happy, but I want sex. It would be simple enough to have it, but the problem is I’m not attracted to beauty, I’m attracted to intelligence. I love people of all kinds but I find a woman with an intelligent mind fascinating.

Therein lies the rub. If a woman is intelligent enough for me to find sexually attractive, I’m more than likely going emotionally drawn to her too. So even if I found an intelligent woman to be my friend and she consented to a “friends with benefits” casually sexual relationship there is every chance I would become emotionally attached.

Thus I want sex as in the dream but my fear of intimacy is standing in my way. Anyhow thanks for reading my weirdness. LOL. 😀